In recent years, a number of semiconductor device manufacturers are manufacturing system LSIs represented by an SOC (system on chip) as main products. As for the system LSIs, there are many cases where the number of units manufactured in lifetime is decided at a start of manufacturing. For this reason, in order for the semiconductor device manufacturers to obtain as much profit as possible, it is important, even in the case of producing a new product, to perform production with a proper input from the beginning and finish the production in a short period of time. Therefore, it is required to perform a mass-production transfer promptly after completion of a prototype.
Conventionally, the mass-production transfer of the new product is performed by transferring quality information and recipe information. As for the mass-production transfer in reality, however, it is not sufficient to transfer the quality information and recipe information. This is because a quality of a semiconductor device is different depending on a difference between semiconductor manufacturing apparatus (hereafter, referred to as a “manufacturing apparatus”) manufacturers or a difference between specifications of the manufacturing apparatuses, that is, a “apparatus-difference” existing between the manufacturing apparatuses.
As for a method of solving the problem of the apparatus-difference, Copy Exactly of Intel Corporation, U.S. is known. See “First flash memory in the industry produced by 0.25 micron process” dated Feb. 3, 1998 and retrieved on the Internet on Dec. 9, 2003 <URL: http://www.intel.co.jp/jp/intel/pr/press98/025FLASH.htm>. This method is intended to reduce occurrences of the apparatus-difference as much as possible by purchasing large quantities of the manufacturing apparatuses of the same manufacturer at a time and further matching the specifications of the manufacturing apparatuses in detail.
However, the above-mentioned method requires an enormous amount of investment at a time, and so most semiconductor device manufacturers cannot adopt it in reality.
Therefore, on a mass-production transfer in reality, the engineers having engaged in development and trial-production of the new product are dispatched to a mass-production transfer destination to solve the problem of the apparatus-difference. To be more specific, the problem of the apparatus-difference is absorbed by using know-how held unrecorded by the engineers, and a quality equivalent to the prototype is realized at the mass-production transfer destination so as to transfer the mass-production.
As a semiconductor manufacturing process uses a lot of microfabrication, it is apt to be influenced by the apparatus-difference in comparison with other fields of manufacturing. Therefore, it is essential to absorb the problem of the apparatus-difference.